Scalet Letter
In the Novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the society of a Puritan town of Boston excludes anyone who is a nonconformist or is in any way deviant from their thoughts, laws, and standards. However, the townspeople themselves are not without fault. However, they try to conceal and contain their passions and all their faults due to their own fear of being excluded. All the characters in the book who are excluded from society are the ones who are the most "natural" and true at heart, possessing a sixth-sense perception and almost magical intuition that allows them to see through the public facade that others project in order to protect themselves. There are five main characters, throughout the novel that either obtain or this sixth-sense or have it used against them to see through their own facades. These characters are Hester Prynne; Pearl, her daughter; Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband; Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the priest that Hester committed adultery with; and finally Mistress Hibbins, the governor's sister that is a witch. Hester Prynne's separation from the townspeople is both physical and mental. The townspeople expel her from the town and lab
But thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but, since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity (115). My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do and all we suffer. She is a "venerable witch-lady"(130) and "a bitter-tempered sister (99). Another character, not a part of the common people of Boston, is Hester's husband who goes by the alias of Roger Chillingworth. I have no such power as thou tallest me of. " Mistress Hibbins tells Hester, during Dimmesdale's last sermon, "Yonder that divine man! That saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as -I must needs say-he really looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went forth out of his study. "Hester was surprised by the confidence by which [Mistress Hibbins] affirmed a personal connection between so many persons (herself among them) and the Evil One (213). However, by becoming isolated from the Puritanical town of Boston and all its prejudices, Hester is able to look at the people objectively and see much she was not able to see before. In the beginning of her punishment and solitary life, Hester has enough courage to beautifully decorate her letter, mocking her sentence. All of them have some streak of evil in them. She probably obtained this power by selling her soul to the Black Man. "Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester that [the scarlet letter] gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts (73). Roger Chillingworth, as an outsider, can also sense people very well. People who are different and pose a threat toward the society's persona are the ones who are banished.
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Acceptance Essays
